California 2 Puerto Rico » Kitchen

Tackling Moisture Issues in Puerto Rico

Summer — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:48:40 +0000

Along with beautiful tropical weather comes little annoyances that have to do with all of the moisture in the air. Anytime you open any food, cereal for example, it goes stale in minutes (literally sometimes!). In order to keep things edible, you have to keep them in the refrigerator: Spices, boxes of cereal, flour, sugar, etc…which makes for one annoyingly crammed full fridge!

The moisture issue also creeps into our closets and things that have been in there for more then a week or two smell funky and mildewy. I actually have mildew growing on all of the leather high heeled shoes that I don’t ever wear.

But I recently found a SOLUTION to these two little moisture/humidity problems! For the kitchen we ordered a set of OXO Pop Containers. We actually found one of these containers at the local Kmart, but they were $22 a piece! Once we tried it and found that they work great to keep the humidity out of our food, I went online and found that Macys.com (who ships to PR), had a 10 piece set for $100. These containers really do work so well at keeping our food fresh as they have a type of pop seal that uses suction to seal. We can keep cereal in the cabinet again…YAY!

Next, I tackled the mildewy closets with Space Bags. We have way too many clothes that we NEVER wear now that we live in Puerto Rico. This includes my collection of vintage fur coats, high heel shoes, Stefan’s designer suits, ties and dress clothes, snowboarding gear, etc. These items have been literally rotting in our closets. So the other day I finally busted out the Space Bags that we bought well over a year ago and I LOVE THEM! They are so incredibly perfect for Puerto Rico, or any place that has high humidity. I just ordered 10 more…haha.

Look! My shoes are shrink wrapped!

Our Kitchen is 99% Done

Stefan — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:48:31 +0000

Yes, that’s right. After a year and a half of piecing together our kitchen when we had the money and when our custom cabinet builder had the time to show up, we are finally there. Well, not quite there, but 99% there. I am kind of counting our chickens before the eggs have hatched here, but all of the appliances are (and have been) installed, all of the woodwork is done, the handles are installed, the marble floors are installed, the drywall is installed, it’s painted and the plumbing is done. Not to mention, it looks pretty good.

We are only two things shy of a completed kitchen.

Last piece of matching granite for our desk area
Under cabinet lighting

The under cabinet lighting is not a problem. All of the wiring is done, the switch is in, we just need to buy/install the lights. I may do that myself or I may wait for Brian to come down for another vacation. Brian is our buddy from Florida who keeps taking his vacations to come down here and help us with EVERYTHING electrical. He has pretty much done all of our electrical work and had great suggestions on what/where/how everything should be planned out. Unlike Summer and I, this is not his first rodeo.

The granite is a different story, and I have my fingers crossed. The granite we have in the kitchen seems to be running in short supply on the island and they are currently trying track down the pieces of slab that we need. The reason why we didn’t buy all the granite at once is because the kitchen lay out changed a couple of months after installing the counter tops. Not by much, but we decided to add some drawers for our pots and pans next to the stove, a knife/utensil drawer and a built-in mahogany cutting board, a built in beverage cooler (originally JUST a wine fridge, but it does a great job keeping Medalla cold and is great for that little bit of extra fridge space when cooking for a bunch of people) and a workstation area for our daughter to do homework and for me to stack all of the mail I never open.

Worlds Largest Pepper Grinder Discovered in PR

Stefan — Fri, 23 May 2008 12:23:20 +0000

Summer and I headed out to Mayaguez yesterday to get a bunch of errands done. We went to Marshals and Sams Club (total trip time: Marshals + Sams Club = Five Hours). The traffic wasn’t too bad, but we got caught at the same section of lights out by the Denny’s. Traffic would cruise through there so much more smooth if they timed the lights better. The way the lights are timed, there is always a jam.

We went to Marshals looking for a mirror to hang in the great room upstairs and to see if there was any other stuff we couldn’t do without. We didn’t find a mirror, but we found a bunch of other really cool stuff…some of it came home with us (towels, candle holders, wood bowl, laundry basket, Sierra Nevada Spicy Mustard), some of it didn’t (retro Nike sneakers, lap top bag, giant pepper grinder).

Check out this GIANT Pepper Grinder that they had in the Culinary section. Are you kidding me? This thing must break a world record. I would need to build a new pantry just to house this thing! Yeah, so this didn’t go home with us.

Fresh Pepper Anyone?

Cooking in the New Kitchen

Summer — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 15:09:23 +0000

Our kitchen is finally fully functional! Here is Stefan cooking lasagna on his birthday (12/18):

The kitchen isn’t quite finished, but it works, so we are happy . To finish the kitchen, this is what needs to get done:

~ Cabinet doors hung
~ Pantry/wine refrigerator/wetbar area to be built and installed
~ Breakfast bar to be built and installed
~ Minor lighting work (under cabinet lights and one track light)
~ Water purifier installed (we have to have someone cut a hole in the granite. Oops!)
~ Box in over sink lights

Painting the Kitchen, AGAIN

Stefan — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 20:47:31 +0000

When we first picked out the colors for the house (seems like months ago…wait, it may have been) we were still staring at drywall (actually, 5/8′s fire resistant greenboard) trying to imagine what the house would look like when it was done…which helped us enough to pick out the paint colors. I really think we did a great job with picking out all of the colors except for one, the kitchen. Once we were done painting it, it looked pretty much exactly the same as the greenboard that we just finished painting on three layers of base coat to make white!

Today, Mark came by and painted the entire kitchen white. Well, it is some fancy name for white…antique white, or albatross or something. I was sure to pick out the correct color white from our pile of new paint bucket cans (similar to college pyramids of Old Milwaukee beer cans) because we also bought three shades of grey for my office and have a white for summers office and a bunch of other colors and concrete sealers for downstairs. Seems like a small time mistake, but painting a room the wrong color really sucks.

Painting the kitchen…AGAIN

Kitchen Sink and Faucet Installation

Stefan — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 12:11:38 +0000

I know, I know! We haven’t been posting our progress on the blog as much as we used to. Summer and I have both been super busy and have been trying to make an effort to keep everyone updated…so here’s an update.

Yesterday, one of the American plumbers that has lived down here since 1987 came to the house and started installing our reverse osmosis water filtration system, faucet and garbage disposal. It should be done today which will give us a fully functioning kitchen. Way better than our old one on the back porch.

Jamie and Brian both brought down some fresh tastykakes for us to stock our kitchen with. I don’t think they are going to last too long

Granito Por La Cocina

Summer — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 21:21:46 +0000

Today was a huge day. Not only did we pour the cement slab in the back and mow the lawn, we also had the granite countertops in the kitchen installed:

After riding the decision merry-go-round, Stefan and I purchased our granite counter tops for the Home Depot in Mayaguez (cost was $4500). Home Depot told us that it would take 5 – 6 weeks to have the counters installed, but it only took 2 weeks!

I really, really, really like the way they came out too. The kitchen counters are now a tan/brown/black tiger stripe looking granite. I think it pulls together the stainless/black appliances and mahogony cabinets perfectly.

Now we just have to get that ugly green off the walls.

Kitchen Countertops

Summer — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 20:12:45 +0000

Stefan and I have spent a lot of time trying to pick out our counter tops for the kitchen. First we wanted granite, but the only granite we liked was the the most expensive ($75 per sq ft) and we didn’t really like it THAT much. Stefan went to the quarry to check out what it would look like as a slab and we decided we wern’t excited enough to spend that much on it. SO, we got to doing some research and Stefan decided that he liked Silestone. I checked out the Silestone at Home Depot in San Diego and, quite honestly, I didn’t love it. My mom suggested marble since she has marble countertops, but Stefan had made up his mind and wanted the Silestone. That was fine with me because it was cheaper then the granite and the kitchen is Stefans deal, so whatever he wants in there is muy bueno.

Stefan and I went to Home Depot in Mayaguez to place our order for the Silestone. And we ended up buying a light brown tiger stripey granite. Haha.

Who wants a ride on the decision making merry-go-round/?!

Grout Cleaning – Marble Floors

Stefan — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 13:44:49 +0000

After quite a few tests of the grout in the kitchen, we went with an Antique White Non-Sanded Grout. Gino grouted all of the seams and little cracks yesterday…and this morning I am sponging the entire floor tile by tile. I am using two buckets of water and one sponge to clean the thin film of grout from the tile surface…one dirty water bucket that I use to dip the sponge into after wiping one tile and then the smaller bucket to dampen the sponge in clean water so I can get started on the next tile with some relatively clean water (I breaded chicken in a similar fashion when I was a line cook….clean hand…dirty hand).

Here are some pictures after one round of sponging. It will probably take three meticulous passes with the sponge to get the grout residue off of the marble before we are able to seal it with the 511 Impregnator. It took me about 40 minutes to go tile by tile…and my back is feeling real nice. It really makes me appreciate the hard work Gino has put in to get the floor completely flat and the butt joints to line up so well.

It’s hard to see the film from this angle, but it’s there

You can see the thin film from this angle

Marble Instalation in Kitchen

Stefan — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 15:50:05 +0000

We started working on the kitchen floor yesterday. We are butt jointing all of the tiles (no gap) which makes it a more difficult task as opposed to having a gap between each seem that would allow you to fudge the measurements a bit.

After measuring the entire room, determining the center point and determining which part of the room is going to be the focal point, we laid out the tiles so that all of the cuts would be against the wall on the right and or under the cabinets once they are completely installed. The entrance has full tiles as will the main work area of the kitchen. The first few rows of marble that were installed need to sit for 48 hours to completely cure before they start making cuts and laying the sides. They’ll need to walk on them which means they need to be completely set and dry.

The factory cuts of the marble are not perfect, some of them are a little bit thicker at one end vs the other and some of the edges have tiny areas that look beveled. I don’t know if that is how all marble is, or if that is a bi-product of buying marble in Puerto Rico. There are going to be some small gaps that we’ll have to fill in with a grout at the end of the day. Gino suggested we grind up broken pieces of the marble to create a grout that matches color perfectly. We’ll see…do any of you have experience with a decision like this?

Here are some pictures of the progress: